You have good reason to be satisfied with his character and prospects. I trust that you will yet have much comfort in him. I am spending a few days with the venerable Mrs. Garrettson, a relation of Mrs. Olin's, who is with me. You are no doubt well informed in regard to the doings and prospects of the General Conference. Few men are in a position to grieve more deeply than I do over our Church difficulties. I am unfortunate, perhaps, in not being able to approve of the policy that we are likely to pursue, though I concede fully the purity and good intentions of those who shape our course. God will, I trust, bring good out of so much apparent evil. This is my only hope.. I have no party spirit. I had no hand in the measures which the General Conference is, as I think, so unwisely about to abrogate. I am far from wishing myself a member of the responsible body on whom this business devolves, when I must be in a hopeless minority, incapable of preventing evil or of doing good. May God overrule all to his own glory. Let Christ's cause prosper. Let the right be done, and I shall rejoice.

CLXXI. TO THE REV. DR. M'CLINTOCK

(On the death of President Emory.)

Middletown, May 25th, 1848. In your last letter to me you intimated an intention to attend the General Conference, and I have been looking for some notice of your presence in Pittsburgh, to direct a letter to you there. The melancholy event which has led me to know that you are at home renders it improbable, I suppose, that you will be able to go to Pittsburgh at all. I therefore forward this to Carlisle, a place the mention of which fills me with sadness so deep as to disqualify me for writing. The death of our friend Emory has afflicted me beyond what I am able to express, and I am thrown back to first principles as the only refuge from a sorrow intense to a very inconvenient degree. I have for some years looked upon him with

peculiar interest and high hopes; and though his delicate health had, perhaps, prepared you and his nearest friends for his early dissolution, I had indulged a strong expectation that these ominous symptoms would pass away, and leave him, if not a healthy, at least a living, working man, for many years to come. When I heard of his sudden illness last autumn, I was utterly unprepared for it, and I now seem to myself as having been in a dream, from which the last shock has only awakened me.

My personal intercourse with him has been rather inconsiderable. We were not what may be called intimate. Whether from a measure of constitutional caution on his part, or from his not finding me quite congenial, I know not how it happened that our relations fell short of confidential and friendly, in the highest import of these terms. I can, nevertheless, truly say that I loved him, and I always desired some nearer communion with him. I still hoped for it to the last, though I now, perhaps, enjoy a special satisfaction in knowing that my affection for him was wholly unselfish, and very much on public grounds. His parentage, his precocious wisdom and manliness, gave him almost unexampled advantages for usefulness to the Church, and his piety and singleness of heart prompted him to make the most of his providential facilities. In this point of view I was accustomed to look upon him with peculiar interest. I think his power consisted very much in the high development of the qualities I have spoken of. His freedom from egotism made him unconsciously self-relying. His faith in truth and goodness, the simplicity of his aims, and the elevation of his motives, armed him with a might to be coveted by many, his equals, at least, in all merely intellectual attributes. You will think me rash in pretending to speak on a subject with which I am necessarily but imperfectly acquainted. Recollect, I only give out these as my impressions, and that to you. How mysterious is this dispensation! to use a commonplace expression,

which almost passes for cant. The father's decease provoked the same reflection; how much more the son's! How can the Church spare Robert Emory? Very well, no doubt, because God is her provider and chief Shepherd; but the difficulty is not easy to dispose of on other grounds.

CLXXII. TO MR. J. R. OLIN.

Middletown, May 26th, 1848.

MY DEAR BROTHER,-It is now several months since I received a letter from you, and I have become quite anxious to hear of your welfare. From the latest accounts that I have had, verbal and indirect, I was led to conclude that you were not more unwell than usual this spring, perhaps a little less infirm. This is about the best I may expect to hear from you. Any advancement toward good, or even tolerable health, must be very slow. I am always thankful to hear that you hold your own. Even this indicates the presence of considerable powers of resistance, and, consequently, of vital energy. I feel a desire that you should live on to old age, as strong as I could, were you in a situation to enjoy life with the highest relish. This is, perhaps, somewhat unreasonable, and may even seem unkind, if our desires were allowed to have some influence over the issue of the infirmities of our friends; for what can be more cruel than to desire to detain some time longer in this anxious world those who are appointed to suffering here, but who have, through grace, good title to an inheritance with the saints above, where the inhabitants never say, "I am sick." Life, however, is always valuable, and the afflictions which, to a hasty observer, might seem to detract from its claims, are susceptible of being turned to so good account, that it is not plain that we should regard them as detracting from, but rather as enhancing the value of our earthly being. Certainly there is enough in this view to silence all complaints, and quell impatience. It is, at any

rate, enough for us that we are as our Master, and that all our changes are in his merciful, mighty hands.

My health is not quite so vigorous this spring as it was through the autumn and winter, though I have to be thankful that, for a year or more, I have not been confined to my bed a single day—a statement that I could not have made in more than ten years before. Little Stephen Henry, now thirteen months old, has been perfectly healthy, and is a very fat, fair-skinned, lovely boy. He has generally been pronounced handsome, though this declaration is usually accompanied by another that impairs its credibility not a little, viz., that he looks much like his father. Both declarations are, perhaps, true; but if so, certainly not independent of this truth, that a handsome child may strongly resemble a man that is not so.

CLXXIII. TO THE REV. DR. OLIN.

Carlisle, May 27th, 1848. Your most kind letter was received last night, and affected me sensibly with rejoicing that you are still alive. Let me say, also, how deeply penetrated we all are with the spontaneous offerings of your Faculty in the resolutions sent to us. As no usage demanded such an utterance, it is the more grateful to us all. The resolutions have been communicated to the family, to whom, also, I took the liberty of reading your letter. It soothed and softened their hearts.

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Your estimate of my dear friend is a very just one, indeed. On one point you need correction: he not only found you congenial," but admired and loved you fervently; indeed, I am sure that I have never known him speak in terms of higher esteem or warmer affection for any man than for yourself. Count him, then, among the loving friends that you are to meet in heaven. O præclarum diem, quam ad illud, divinum animorum concilium cætum que proficiscamur!

You will hardly think that I exaggerate when I assure

you that Robert was the best and purest man that I have ever known. His aim was so entirely single, that his whole life was clarified by it. His religious experience, since the memorable manifestation of the Spirit which he received in 1835, after days of solitary wrestling with God, has been always of the most satisfactory tenor. On the question of his acceptance with Christ there has never been any doubt or darkness; and so it continued to the very last. I reached Baltimore on the day of his arrival there, Thursday, 11th of May, but he was so weak that I could not see him until the Friday morning. On that day and the two following I had various conversations with him, but all very brief, as he was utterly prostrated. "My peace is abounding, clear," said he; "it has been great during all my sickness, and is still so great, and so unbroken, that I wonder at it myself." There was no false confidence-no want of self-scrutiny; but he had Christ in his heart-his life had been hid with Christ in God, and Christ was with him in his dying hours. On Wednesday he made his will (i. e., a new one, some changes being necessary), and afterward, as if loth that his last strength should be devoted to worldly matters, he bore testimony to all that were present of the love of God, and of his sure hope in Christ. On Thursday he was still more feeble; and on Thursday night, at half past eight, he quietly went to sleep in Jesus. So may we rest in Christ.

but

It is, indeed, mysterious that God should thus call away those who seem fitted to be his most available instruments. "His way is in the sea, and his path in the great waters." Yet he told his disciples, "What I do ye know not now, ye shall know hereafter;" and, perhaps, one day we shall see light in his light, even upon this the darkest of his dealings with us. One of Emory's last anxieties was in regard to the division of the Church property. I told him that I thought some equitable plan would certainly be adopted, and he thanked God most fervently for the prospect. It